Burying power lines in Fairfax County would come at a high financial cost (#DMVReads)

By Andy Smith

June’s deadly storm caused power outages across the Washington region. (Gary Cameron/Reuters)
(Gary Cameron - Reuters)
As communities across the greater D.C. region continue to assess the aftermath of June’s derecho, one common concern is how to prevent widespread power outages from occurring again. In the District, Councilwoman Mary Cheh recently proposed requiring Pepco to bury more power lines underground. The Annandale VA blog reports that in Fairfax County, burying utilities there would come at a high cost.

“It’s ‘amazingly expensive,’ says W. Todd Minnix, chief of the Transportation Design Division in the Fairfax County Department of Transportation. It’s also very complicated, he says. Construction on a $3.5 million underground utilities project in McLean started July 9. ‘It’s been a long, drawn-out process to get this underway,’ Minnix says, noting that it’s been in the works since 1999.”

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Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.